Page 29 of A Gaze So Longing (The Fall of Livenza #1)

For days, Favian kept returning to those words he had spoken, even though Leonardo had not brought them up again.

I care about you.

How foolish of him to admit such a thing out loud.

He was supposed to keep these feelings at bay, not entice Leonardo.

I care about you, too.

He had known this, hadn’t he?

They both had.

Still, it was one thing to know something, and another to hear it spoken aloud.

And for once, his relationship with Leonardo was not the heaviest weight on his chest.

He was on his way to dinner the following day when someone called for him from behind. It was Lelia.

“Your Highness requests your presence in his chambers.”

Confused by the direct request, Favian’s brows furrowed. “He wants to take breakfast in his quarters?”

Lelia shook her head, her face revealing both confusion and concern. “His Highness did not ask for food. He merely said to get you as fast as possible.”

That could not be good.

He thanked Lelia and headed for Leonardo’s chambers, his feet growing faster with every step until he was running.

His knock was rushed, almost frantic.

He got no response.

“Your Highness?” he asked, and then, “Leonardo?”

A sound, almost a whimper.

Favian pushed open the door.

Leonardo was sitting on his bed, his hands locked behind his neck, elbows almost touching. He was breathing hard, cheeks pressed between his arms.

After hastily closing the door behind him, Favian rushed to the prince’s side, instinctively placing a hand on his back. The circles rubbed themselves, the silk of Leonardo’s blouse soft under his fingertips. Leonardo was warm, hot—almost worryingly so.

The prince’s body sank into Favian’s at the touch. Favian caught him.

Favian racked his head as to what might have reminded Leonardo of the war to set off this moment .

Favian would have heard if shots had been fired on the premises, but there were likely a variety of instigators for moments like this.

He knew all too well that the complexities of pain liked to show themselves in a multitude of ways.

Perhaps it didn’t matter what had set him off—Leonardo was in anguish, and he had asked for Favian while he still could. That was all that mattered now.

Leonardo buried his face in Favian’s chest, his arms wrapping around the prince as he began to cry.

Once again, Favian was holding a hurting soul in his arms, and once again, he had no idea what to do about it.

He kept one hand on Leonardo’s back, the other finding its way into the prince’s hair.

They hadn’t been this close since the night in the woods.

Hadn’t touched like this since Leonardo’s first moment .

Favian’s fingers made their way through Leonardo’s curls, softly massaging his scalp while his other hand stilled, palm pressed flush against the prince’s upper back.

“You’re alright,” Favian managed to say. “You’re at home. You’re not in danger.”

He felt Leonardo nod against his chest, the warmth of his breath making Favian shudder. The prince’s weeping wasn’t violent, but it was steady. The fabric of his tunic was getting wet; Favian could feel the tears on his skin through the fibers. It didn’t matter.

“You’re alright,” he repeated, over and over again until Leonardo calmed in his arms. “You’re alright.”

After a few moments of stillness, the prince detangled himself from Favian, avoiding his eyes. “Apologies,” he said quietly. “I didn’t mean to get your clothes all messed up. I thought it was going to be like last time.”

“It’s alright,” Favian responded truthfully, confused by the formality of Leonardo’s words. “Do you know what set it off?”

Leonardo was turned away from him now, staring at the window. “I saw someone walking around with a rifle outside. I didn’t know they were so. . .present now.” Favian hadn’t, either. “I—I didn’t think that would be enough to. . .to make me like this .”

Thinking of all the things that had put him into a similar state before, Favian said, “They aren’t always logical.”

Being touched was one of these things for him.

He had built up a certain level of resistance compared to the intense reactions he used to have whenever a hand landed on his body, but still, most instances of being touched remained uncomfortable.

It was worse when the movements happened quickly, without warning.

Even more so when his skin was not protected by layers of fabric.

It wasn’t as bad when he knew it was going to happen.

It was utterly unbearable whenever his neck was involved.

No matter how hard Favian tried to suppress the images, when someone touched his neck, they returned of their own accord.

Because the worst memories were not merely those in which King Amondo forced his way into Favian’s mouth—on days he really wanted the servant to feel his disdain, he would choke him.

Not enough for him to actually worry about passing out or to leave marks on his throat, but Favian suspected that it had never been about that. It was about control, always.

Control, as he had come to learn over time, was a deciding factor not only in the way the king toyed with Favian.

The control he was given in talking, or refusing to talk, about his experiences mattered, too.

After all, there were reasons he had spent years keeping what had happened to himself.

He could not bear people telling him what they thought the king’s abuse felt like, hated them asking him about it, and loathed their unprompted opinions.

Despised them telling him how bad he had it.

By now, these were the most painful instances, the ones in which he was unable to share his pain in truth.

For once, it hadn’t been Favian’s silence that his mind had filled on his own.

“Let’s talk about something else,” Leonardo eventually mumbled.

The issue couldn’t be the wet spot on Favian’s tunic, he was sure.

Was the prince afraid to show weakness? But he had called for Favian once he must have realized what was happening, had been willing to let himself be supported.

Had done precisely what would never have crossed Favian’s mind—he had asked for help.

“Are you sure?” Favian asked, uncertain if the prince wanted him to press or to let it go.

Leonardo nodded and swiftly changed the topic. “I was reading up on our neighboring kingdoms and their customs.” He wiped his eyes, shuffled his hair, and got up. “I’ve been trying to find out how other rulers manage their staff.”

Switching topics this quickly, this seamlessly, was wrong—Favian noticed it in the prince’s still-red eyes, the fingernails pressing into the tips of his thumbs, the hoarseness of his voice. And yet, Favian would be damned if he even so much as tried to tell Leonardo how to handle his pain.

The book the prince handed Favian was huge and heavy.

He placed it in Favian’s hands as if expecting him to read it, though Leonardo must have remembered that Favian had never learned to make sense of written words.

“I placed paper scraps in the pages I want to come back to. I was thinking of asking someone to go to the library with me, maybe Nico.”

“Nia,” Favian instinctively corrected him.

Leonardo blinked a few times while turning back to him. “What?”

“Nia,“ Favian repeated. This was not the right time for this conversation, he knew it, but there was no stopping it now. The name had escaped his mouth naturally, without so much as a thought. “My sister’s name is Nia. She told me a while ago, but asked me to keep it quiet until now. Only very few people know. Just me and Rodrigo. And now, you.”

He wanted to apologize for derailing the topic, for taking up space in a moment that should still have been Leonardo’s, but the words didn’t make it through his lips before Leonardo spoke.

“She is. . .”

“A girl. She’s not a boy, she is a girl.” Favian surprised himself with the smoothness of the words, the effortless way in which he explained his sister’s reality to the prince.

A beat of silence.

Then: “Oh.”

Favian carefully studied Leonardo’s reaction to the information. He could see the cogs turning in the prince’s head, the processing. Eventually, he asked, “Is that a problem for you?”

Leonardo quickly shook his head. “No, not at all. It’s just. . .” He brought a hand to his face, touched his chin, his cleanly shaven jaw. “Unexpected.”

If Favian hadn’t known better, he would have mistaken the expression on the prince’s face for fear. There was no reason for Leonardo to be scared, though, so he pinned it down as the same bewilderment he, too, had felt when Nia had first told him.

Leonardo’s eyes darted around the room, revealing something. Something Favian was unable to identify.

“You were saying about the books,” Favian offered.

“Right.” Leonardo cleared his throat. “There are so many places around us, and they all have—I mean, they all do—they have different ways of. . .” he trailed off, his pupils still jumping wildly all over the walls.

“I feel like you have something to say.” Favian knew he was growing agitated, worried that Leonardo was going to voice sentiments about Nia that would force Favian to lecture him.

He didn’t want to reprimand the prince, but he knew that if Leonardo were to say even a single bad word about his sister, he would.

In the silence that followed, Favian wondered what, precisely, he could—he would—do if the prince turned out to be more narrow-minded than he had anticipated. Believed.

“I—” Leonardo began, just to turn quiet again.

But his face didn’t betray anything close to judgment or aversion. Favian had been right before—the prince looked scared.

“I think I might be like Nico—Nia.”

The words did not register right away.

Bewildered, Favian tried to clarify, “You are also. . .a girl? A woman?”

“No, I don’t think so. But…Being a man doesn’t feel right to me, either.”

Favian played the words over in his mind multiple times. “I don’t understand.”

This was déjà vu.